Kyrie’s Effortless Crusade

Kyrie Irving, since his precocious Rookie of the Year campaign, has found a way to captivate an audience with effortless shot-making, finishing at the hoop, and ball-handling. Now, he’s looking for a leading role again.

Irving reportedly requested a trade from Cleveland brass, indicating a preference for finding a new home in either San Antonio, Miami, Minnesota, or New York, the last of which he wants “very badly.” Change is good, and Kyrie wants to shake things up.

I’m not going to center my thoughts on who’s to blame. That’s a tired course of dialogue. Do we really need to blame an upstart, young professional basketball player wanting to find a new challenge? Do we really need to blame the second best basketball player of all time wanting the very best co-workers to play with in the last few years of his prime? Do we really need to blame an owner who’s been paying… I’ll stop there. Dan Gilbert’s a turd.

Instead, let’s take a little trip down memory lane, and see how exactly Kyrie Irving’s been able to parlay his effortless play on the court into an effortlessly beautiful campaign that always seems to shift the narrative.

Irving, almost literally, took a Youtube cut of his highlights and parlayed that into the top pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. In retrospect, the choice was pretty obvious, since Derrick Williams and Enes Kanter haven’t quite amounted to much more than bench role players. Even so, in his one year in college, Kyrie spent more games rocking a boot on the bench and cheering for his underachieving, short-handed team than facilitating a veteran-laden Duke team that was, by far, the most talented team in the land.

Regardless, Irving made an instant splash in the league his rookie year, becoming one of the best clutch performers in the league at the ripe young age of 19. He showed off his incredible finishing skills and shot-making off the bounce. All of that led him to become one the game’s most beloved players, launching Uncle Drew.

But it only lasted about two years. Internal turmoil with Dion Waiters, his backcourt mate, along with his injury record and the weak correlation between his play and his team’s record all began the narrative that Irving was more Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis than Stephen Curry and Steve Nash, players who could never be on championship caliber teams, let alone lead one.

But before the narrative took hold of the trajectory of Kyrie’s career, in came LeBron James. The initial chemistry problems were all deflected onto Dion Waiters, who was exiled to the left corner in Oklahoma City for the pieces that led to the first two Cleveland Finals runs. And along the way to two consecutive Eastern Conference Finals wins, any sort of dip in team play was attributed to Kevin Love and his lack of fit with the rest of the roster and interior defense. Kyrie kept being Kyrie, pulling the trigger on three-pointers, pull-up midrange jumpers, and crazy finishes with English, all while LeBron led the team, facilitated the offense, sparked the defense, and played with the media. Irving’s awkward play during the regular season never really made it to the forefront of the discussion as to why the Cavaliers weren’t running roughshod through the conference in the regular season.

Then, the 2016 Finals and the 2017 playoffs happened. The most iconic shot in Cleveland history, and a few iconic playoff scoring performances against the Celtics and the Warriors, and the narrative became that Kyrie’s spotty performance in the regular season was completely acceptable, given that he elevated his offense during the playoffs. Even Bill Simmons who was at the forefront of the “Kyrie is the second coming of Marbury” started to inflate Irving into a top ten basketball player.

So, now we’re here, three Finals appearances and a ring later, having played sidekick to LeBron James for three seasons, and Irving wants out. That’s fine, I mean it. It’s not a betrayal. But it’s really telling that some of the narrative swirling around Kyrie’s public trade request has turned into criticism of LeBron’s silence this summer. Every single fucking NBA player is criticized for speaking out during the summer about team transactions. Hell, even LeBron’s been criticized for that very same thing.

Normally, if a young player wants to leave the security of a winning situation, the media excoriates him as selfish or self-centered or self-aggrandizing. Kyrie has effortlessly avoided the media scrutiny that most players of his stature have experienced before.

So, where do we go from here? Either LeBron and Kyrie meet up in Vegas beside a pool and talk it out. Or Kyrie’s gone.

Minnesota’s an intriguing option for Kyrie. A trio of Irving, Butler, and Towns is a great counter to what the Warriors do. Wiggins, one of the crappy backup bigs they have (Aldrich or Dieng), and a first round draft pick is the probably the price, which doesn’t give Cleveland much to work with, so that deal probably won’t work.

Miami gives Irving the opportunity to play constantly in pick-and-roll sets with an elite center, surrounded by wing defenders. Cleveland probably says no to this too, since they’d only get Dragic and Winslow, which makes their team worse immediately and doesn’t really improve their future outlook.

San Antonio literally has nothing to give Cleveland back, which is actually the best kind of deal with Cleveland. That involves a third team. We’ll revisit this soon.

But, recent reports that Kyrie wants to be in New York the most are interesting. He wants to be the leader of a team, guiding a young prospect in Kristaps Porzingis much like LeBron did for him the past three years. And since Kyrie’s young still (ony 25), a pick-and-roll combination with Porzingis could be lethal moving on.

There are other trade rumors out there, Brogdon, Middleton, and draft picks for Kyrie, or Hood and Rubio for Kyrie, but none of those make too much sense.

Here are the two trades that I feel could be best for all parties involved:

San Antonio gets Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert from Clevelad, and Elijah Millsap from Phoenix
Cleveland gets Eric Bledsoe and Jared Dudley from Phoenix and Danny Green from San Antonio
Phoenix gets LaMarcus Aldridge and Dejounte Murray from San Antonio and some picks from both parties

Phoenix probably says no to this, trading away two veterans who understand the culture for an aging half-star and a young prospect who doesn’t look so promising once he’s out of Texas. But Bledsoe wasn’t even playing for them near the end of the season, so it’s not a huge loss of the team.

This scenario is best for Kyrie’s on-court life. He gets to control the offense, facilitate it much like Tony Parker did in his youth, and he’ll have a good defensive system around him to assuage for his lack of effort. But sharing the court and the spotlight with Kawhi Leonard might not be what he wants.

Which brings me to…

New York gets Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert from Cleveland
Cleveland gets Carmelo Anthony from New York and Eric Bledsoe and Tyson Chandler from Phoenix
Phoenix gets Frank Ntilikina from New York and Tristan Thompson and Kay Felder from Cleveland

Forgive me for the graphic. ESPN isn’t quite letting me trade Frank Ntilikina for a while, so that’s why Mindaugas Kuzminskas is filling in.

This is the best sort of deal all around. Cleveland gets appreciably better, which is hard to explain, given they’re trading away their second best player. They’ll have the offensive lineup of Bledsoe, Smith, James, Anthony, and Love, which will be exactly as hard to stop on offense as their Love at center lineups were this year. But when they need stops, Bledsoe, Smith, James, Anthony, and Chandler is actually pretty good. There’s a rim protector, even if he’s on his last legs, Bledsoe to guard the point of attack, a decent catch-and-shoot chaser in Smith, James as the free safety, and Anthony to gobble up defensive rebounds.

Kyrie gets to play in New York and fulfill a lifelong fantasy. And Phoenix gets a point guard prospect that fits in perfectly next to the ball-dominant Devin Booker and a center who can do the dirty work for a young team who’s waiting for their big prospects to develop. It’s win-win all around.

Make this happen, guys.

But how good can a Kyrie-led team really be? To answer that, we have to think about just how good Kyrie is, especially on the spectrum of point guards.

Is he Brandon Jennings good? Duh.

Is he Reggie Jackson good? Yes, definitely. That probably puts him in the top 20 of point guards in the league.

He’s definely Jrue Holiday good, Jeremy Lin good, Goran Dragic good, and even Eric Bledsoe good.

That puts him in the top ten.

Kemba or Kyrie? I’ll take Kyrie in a heartbeat.

Kyrie or Kyle Lowry? Still Kyrie.

Kyrie or Isaiah Thomas? Flip Kyrie and Isaiah Thomas. The Celtics are probably just as good, if not better, and the Cavaliers may not be. It’s definitely a toss-up. but I’d take Kyrie.

Kyrie or Mike Conley? Depends on the supporting cast, but if we’re talking about the lead player with no 1B option like Conley has in Memphis, then I got Irving.

Is Kyrie Damian Lillard good? I think so. What about John Wall good? I think so too. But I’m not certain.

So, basically, in terms of point guards, the top tier is Curry, Paul, and Westbrook. The second tier is Kyrie, Thomas, Wall, Lillard, and Conley, with Kyrie closer to the top of the tier than not.

We haven’t seen Kyrie lead in a team for a sustained period of time in a while. Not since Luol Deng after being brutalized by Tom Thibodeau was his best running mate. It’s hard to judge whether Kyrie with Kristaps Porzingis as his next best player would make for a playoff team. But, if we take some guidance from the Lillard-Aldridge Blazers years, it’s a formidable experience.

Whatever the result, Kyrie’s looking to shake things up for his career, and if he gets his wishes, then it’ll make for an interesting new landscape for the NBA.